I went diving yesterday at the famed UK dive site - Stoney Cove, with an old school friend Matt for the day. He also works at the local dive shop, SDS and sold me half of my new kit. So if it wasn’t all top notch I had the guy to complain to out there with me 
We got there at about 10:30 and were allowed into the bottom car park - now I know why everyone obsesses over this as I saw how far we could have been walking in full kit. It cost £15 each which I thought was pretty steep to just let us dive in their old quarry but I am new to all this.
I just know everyone wants to see me covered head to toe in neoprene so you are in for a treat - Matt took a photo of me just before I jumped into the water but didn’t quite manage to get my head in the shot. As Matt hadn’t been diving this year he wanted to take it easy so we avoided the deep bit in the middle and stuck to a floor of about 22 m maximum depth.
We took in a few of the sites on our two dives including a big boat (must check its name), a transit van, a Wessex helicopter and a submarine with one of those geocache signs on it. We even saw some fish here including a couple of monster pike! You can see all my other pictures
here - I got quite a few. All my new equipment worked really well and there were no leaks in my camera stuff. I did a test deployment of my DSMB and we did our safety stop off it on our second dive.
I was quite amused though as I had told Matt about the diving I had done out in Malta and how they had asked me if I breathed (I do by the way). They wouldn’t let me have a 15 L cylinder, even on our 35 m dives as they said I would never need it. In their defence they were right and I usually came up with 60-120 bar I think at the end of every dive. Matt got me a 15 L and a 12 L, and himself a 12 L and 10 L. Needless to say we were coming up for him on the first dive and I finished with 110 bar, and the second I think he had 30 bar and I came up with 100 bar… I think he believes me now. It is all these 10 km runs I think
We had a really good day, finished it off with a beer in the resident pub. I now have Stoney Cove in my log book too, although I did scratch the face of my dive watch a little on the second dive
These were my coldest dives to date at 11 C, but my Oceanic semi-dry suit kept me nice and toasty warm. Matt did fine in his drysuit too. I still haven’t spotted the appeal of dry suits, but it may become apparent up in the Farne Islands next week!